I've been able to quit my job and work full time on Marginalia Search, and starting with 8 months expenses' worth of savings and an incoming grant back in 2023, the project is now funded so I can keep going for several more years.

Seems fairly important to somehow write or talk about what you do[1]. Building stuff and never telling anyone about it never got anyone paid. You don't need to become a shill, but the world needs to learn about what you're doing. Will say with full certainty I would not have been able to quit my job and do this full time if I didn't blog about my misadventures.

Risk of this being mostly survivorship bias, but I think in general it's helpful to build something that's more of an end product and not a library or some other widget in the making of products. Possibly also helpful if yours is an ambitious project that somehow seems doable. Ladybird is possibly an even better case of this going well. Exception possibly being if you end up as a linchpin tech like curl.

In general I don't think patreon/github/etc. donations will ever add up to much than coffee money. Most of my money has been from grants, one large donation from some rando anonymous person, and a nonprofit.

[1] Basically this: https://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/increasing-your-luck-sur...